It came from the same well-worn bag of tricks as, ‘I didn’t tell you I was sleeping with someone else because I knew you’d be upset, and I didn’t want to hurt you’. Thorne knew, deep down, that it had more to do with cowardice than it did with compassion. That the lie by omission was usually worse in the long run than the terrible truth.
He still wasn’t going to tell her, though. Not if he could avoid it…
When Thorne went back into the living room, they made themselves comfortable. They sat together on the floor in front of the sofa; broke up the last of the poppadoms and watched Yvonne Kitson do her turn on Crimewatch.
In a five-minute round-up slot at the end of the programme, Kitson fronted an appeal for more information about the murder of Deniz Sedat. Wearing a well-chosen, charcoal business suit, she said that the incident had ‘shocked a community’ and urged anyone with information to get in touch. Assured them that calls would be treated in confidence. She finished with a special plea to the young woman who had called once already; who had seemed eager to tell them something and whom they were extremely keen to talk to again.
‘Knowing that lovely part of north London as I do,’ Louise said afterwards, ‘I think it would take more than some gangster getting knifed to shock anybody.’
Thorne smiled. ‘We can’t let anyone know that though, can we?’
With millions lavished each year on improving the city’s image, it wasn’t clever to highlight those places where policing came close to warfare. The Olympic Games were only a few years away and already there were jokes. About how well Great Britain would do in the shooting this time round, and the marathon runners straying into parts of Hackney and Tottenham and never being seen again.
Louise began searching through the channels again. ‘She came across well, I thought. Kitson,’ she said.
Thorne shrugged, like he hadn’t really thought about it.
Louise and Yvonne had got on well enough when they’d met; for the few weeks when they’d been working together. But Thorne had sensed a problem developing since, had heard it in Louise’s tone just then, when she was seemingly being complimentary. He’d suggested to her, once, that she might be jealous, and she’d bitten his head off, told him not to flatter himself. He hadn’t been sure what she’d meant. Was he flattering himself to think that Kitson would be interested? Or that Louise would give a shit? He certainly wasn’t going to push his luck by asking.
‘Is there anything else on?’ Louise asked. Thorne leaned over and snatched Time Out from the low table in the window. ‘Anything worth staying out of bed for?’
Thorne flicked through to the TV pages. There were Champions League highlights on ITV after the news. They were showing The Usual Suspects, which he never missed, on Channel Four. There was late-night poker on at least three different cable stations.
‘Absolutely fuck all,’ he said.
There was very little light. Barely enough to see faces thirty feet away, and he couldn’t move too much for fear of making a noise. This was hardly going to be winning any Oscars.
He only had fifteen seconds to play with anyway. But he did what he could to make the clip more interesting: started on the canal and moved across until he had the bloke in the middle of the picture; until he had both of them. ‘Developing the shot’, that’s what it was called.
He lowered the phone, looked at the woman on her knees. His big hands on the top of her head. The grunting and the sucking noises.
There was plenty to develop to…
Him and Angie hadn’t been big on the cinema before; just once or twice probably, before Robbie’d come along. But he’d seen a lot of films over the years inside, got quite a taste for them. Once a week on the big screen and DVDs from the prison library. Nothing like this, of course, they wouldn’t allow that, but there’d been the occasional flash of tit to get excited about now and again. Plenty of prison movies, obviously; they were fond of showing those to wind everybody up. Stir Crazy, Escape from Alcatraz, he’d seen all of them more than once. The Shawshank Redemption when the screws really wanted to take the piss…
He tried to shift his leg an inch or two, could hear something moving in the long grass behind him. It was uncomfortable, crouching in the shadows to keep out of sight, but it wasn’t like he’d planned it this way. He’d had no idea where the fucker was going when he’d started following him. What he’d got planned for the evening.
He’d followed the big van past Southall Park, along the Broadway and down along the route of the canal between the school and the retail park. He’d slowed and turned in when he’d seen the van do the same. Watched the girl walk up to the window and realised that the driver had known exactly what he was looking for.
And what he wanted for his money…
Brooks had got what he needed. Invisible behind a row of recycling bins, he put the phone away. Disgusted with the man leaning back against the dirty, wet wall. Disgusted with himself for being excited.
He watched as the man pushed; the tom’s ponytail swinging as her head moved back and forth. Remembering the feeling – Christ… trying to remember it, years ago – when Angie had done the same thing to him.
Closed his eyes, but could remember only that he would never touch her again. Feel her again.
He took one more good look at the man’s face. Then he lowered his head, and waited for them to finish.
They lay in the dark afterwards, Thorne pressed up against her, sucking in mouthfuls of hair. The breath coming back. They’d finished with Louise on top, and when he’d told her he was coming, she’d pushed herself down in an effort to hold him inside her. He’d rolled from beneath her in the nick of time and she’d groaned and dropped on to her side.
‘I thought it wasn’t safe,’ he said finally.
‘No.’
‘So, why…?’
She grabbed his hand, pulled his arm tighter around her waist.
‘Do you want to get pregnant?’
‘No. Just at that moment, you know? I wanted you to stay inside me.’
A cat – Thorne couldn’t be sure that it was Elvis – was yowling in the garden. The old lady who lived upstairs had some TV quiz show on stupidly loud.
‘I should probably wear something next time.’
‘What, like a fireman’s helmet and wellies?’
‘A condom.’
She snorted. ‘Yes, I know. It just makes me laugh to hear you say it. That you find some things hard to say. You’re weird.’
‘I’m weird?’
They both laughed and rolled over together. Thorne brought his knees up as Louise curled against him. Her breath was on his back and he could feel her eyelashes against his shoulder when she blinked.
He listened to the applause from the television upstairs. And when it had been switched off, he lay there thinking: I don’t know this woman at all.
Remember that time I missed Robbie’s birthday party? The last one before I went inside, the one in the burger place. I know you will, because we had a steaming row about it. You telling me that Robbie was in tears and me shouting all the more because I felt like such an arsehole about it. I’d been doing some stupid favour for Wayne. Poxy driving job down on the coast. Waiting around, wondering what I was involved in and thinking about Robbie running around with his mates and trying his new football shirt on.
It was a favour I owed the bloke, that was the thing.
Thing about it is, I know sometimes people have taken the piss, made me look like a right mug, whatever, but I’ve always tried to be as good as my word, to be reliable. You say you’ll do something, you do it. You understand that, don’t you, Ange?
Same as this business with Nicklin. Liking someone, not liking them’s got fuck all to do with it. When someone does you a favour, you owe them and, whatever else, I’ve always settled my debts. Simple as that.